Embracing Change

Embracing Change

A wise man adapts himself to circumstances, as water shapes itself to the vessel that contains it – Chinese Proverb

In this era of information technology (IT) change seems to happen so fast, that before you have learnt to be competent with one piece of software another five better versions of it has come out. Then not long before the one you have learnt has now been updated. Another scenario, you are talking to somebody and you refer to a certain geographical area by mentioning a landmark, and the person replies, “that is not there anymore” and you look a bit surprised. When we stop for a moment and think of the above scenarioʼs, there is only one word that describes them, and that word is CHANGE.

Whether we like it or not, change will happen, it is inevitable. It is an aspect of life that we have to learn to grow and embrace, as we really do not have many choices than to grow with change. Picture choosing not to change, just like in the above scenario regarding the technology; if you refuse to learn and grow with the change, while others are moving with the change, you become obsolete, because of the choices you have chosen, your number of opportunities lessen.

In the job market it is exactly the same. If you choose not to learn new skills, you will always be referring to the old way of doing things while others have moved on, and this will then not make you as attractive to an employer, compared to someone who does update themselves, whether this be with technology or what is going on in that particular field in the job market.

This does also work the other way around too. If a business is not updating its services and technology to accommodate its customers, they too at some point might become obsolete, whereas their competitors in the field who do update their business to look after their customers, will most likely out of the two, survive to ride the wave of change.

So at some point, or another we are going to have to learn how to embrace change, this could be in the job market or with how we deal with situations in our own everyday lives. Let us start with observation, by looking at ourselves first, this could be our circumstances, our choices and what we might fear about the process of change.

The Human brain is an amazing computer, and the more we understand our own functioning of how it works the clearer we are, as to why we react to certain task as we do. There is a small almond size part of our brain called the Amygdala which is also associated with the sense of smell, but is also the bit that keeps us safe, therefore to keep us safe it tries to keep us in that comfort zone area to protect us. Like a mother keeping eye on her child, making sure her baby is safe in the play area, and not to wander outside. The Amygdala does this good job of taking care of us too, so when we do things outside of our comfort zone it sends out signals to alert us. This is why we have to slightly extend the territory (out of the comfort zone) gradually by doing different things, for about three weeks, till the brain gets use to it and accepts it as part of the natural.

Another aspect of not accepting and resisting change, is our then environment and the circumstance at the time of a change, or sometimes is just rooted in fear: In fear of what if it all goes wrong. In resisting we become tense and stressed, this plays a fundamental part in us not seeing the bigger picture, and we begin to cling to what we know, not wanting to go with the flow. If we were to envision the bigger picture further down the line, along with the possibilities we could see the greater good of how this change could work in favour for us. This is not saying that all changes that happen to us are good, but how we process the change we can make it work for our good.

If change did not happen, could you begin to imagine how things would be! Some who fear change might answer by saying, a lot better than it is now. While those with the innovative, entrepreneurial mind might say, ʻI could not bare to think about itʼ